Pegasus Eventing

🫶

🫶

As riding instructors we spend a lot of time managing the gap between what new students expect riding to be and what it actually is. Most of that gap could be narrowed significantly with one honest conversation before the first lesson ever happens. So here is everything I wish every new student and every new riding family walked in already knowing...

1. Riding is harder than it looks
This is the one that surprises people most. Watching a good rider looks effortless but it is not effortless. It is years of muscle memory, feel, balance, and body awareness built through consistent work over a long time. Your first lessons will feel awkward and uncoordinated and that is completely normal. Every rider you have ever admired felt exactly the way you feel right now when they were starting out.

2. The horse is not a bicycle
It is a living animal with its own personality, its own opinions, and its own good days and bad days. It does not always do what you ask the first time and that is not always your fault but it is always your responsibility to figure out the communication. Learning to work with a horse rather than on top of one is one of the most valuable things riding teaches and it starts from the very first lesson.

3. Progress is not linear
Some weeks you will feel like you have jumped forward three levels. Other weeks you will feel like you have forgotten everything you learned last month. Both are completely normal parts of learning to ride. The students who improve consistently are not the ones who never have bad lessons but they are the ones who show up anyway and keep working through the frustrating ones.

4. One lesson a week is a start but not a program
A single lesson per week gives you exposure to riding. Two lessons per week builds skill significantly faster. The riders who progress quickest are the ones who ride consistently and frequently enough that their muscles and nervous system have time to develop real memory around what correct feels like. If budget allows for more than one lesson per week it is worth it.

5. Your position will feel wrong before it feels right
Correct position in the saddle feels deeply unnatural to most people at first. Heels down feels like you are pushing your foot through the floor. Sitting tall feels like you are leaning back. An independent hand feels like you are doing nothing. Trust the process and trust your instructor. The things that feel strange now become automatic eventually but only if you commit to doing them correctly rather than defaulting back to what feels comfortable.

6. The time around the lesson matters as much as the lesson itself
Grooming your horse before you ride. Learning to tack up correctly. Understanding how to read your horse's body language in the cross ties. This is not the boring part before the real lesson begins. This is horsemanship and it makes you a better rider than an hour in the saddle alone ever will.

7. Bad rides happen to every rider at every level
Including the ones you look up to most. A bad lesson does not mean you are not cut out for this, it just means you are learning something hard and doing it on the back of a living animal that is also having a day. Come back next week and it will be different.
Your instructor is on your side.

8. Every correction we give is in service of your progress and your safety
We are not pointing out what is wrong to make you feel bad but we are pointing out what needs to change so you can get where you want to go faster and more safely. The students who improve fastest are the ones who hear a correction as information rather than criticism and apply it without taking it personally.

9. Riding changes you in ways you will not expect
The patience it builds, the confidence that comes from communicating with an animal ten times your size and being understood. The resilience that develops from falling short of a goal and coming back for it anyway. The community you find at the barn. None of that shows up in the first lesson or even the tenth but it will show up at one point. For most riders it becomes one of the most significant things in their life and not just what they do on Tuesday afternoons but part of who they are.

If you are a riding instructor share this with every new family who walks through your gate. If you are a new student or a parent of one - welcome. You picked something genuinely worth doing!

What do you wish someone had told you before your very first riding lesson?

❤️

As riding instructors we spend a lot of time managing the gap between what new students expect riding to be and what it actually is. Most of that gap could be narrowed significantly with one honest conversation before the first lesson ever happens. So here is everything I wish every new student and every new riding family walked in already knowing...

1. Riding is harder than it looks
This is the one that surprises people most. Watching a good rider looks effortless but it is not effortless. It is years of muscle memory, feel, balance, and body awareness built through consistent work over a long time. Your first lessons will feel awkward and uncoordinated and that is completely normal. Every rider you have ever admired felt exactly the way you feel right now when they were starting out.

2. The horse is not a bicycle
It is a living animal with its own personality, its own opinions, and its own good days and bad days. It does not always do what you ask the first time and that is not always your fault but it is always your responsibility to figure out the communication. Learning to work with a horse rather than on top of one is one of the most valuable things riding teaches and it starts from the very first lesson.

3. Progress is not linear
Some weeks you will feel like you have jumped forward three levels. Other weeks you will feel like you have forgotten everything you learned last month. Both are completely normal parts of learning to ride. The students who improve consistently are not the ones who never have bad lessons but they are the ones who show up anyway and keep working through the frustrating ones.

4. One lesson a week is a start but not a program
A single lesson per week gives you exposure to riding. Two lessons per week builds skill significantly faster. The riders who progress quickest are the ones who ride consistently and frequently enough that their muscles and nervous system have time to develop real memory around what correct feels like. If budget allows for more than one lesson per week it is worth it.

5. Your position will feel wrong before it feels right
Correct position in the saddle feels deeply unnatural to most people at first. Heels down feels like you are pushing your foot through the floor. Sitting tall feels like you are leaning back. An independent hand feels like you are doing nothing. Trust the process and trust your instructor. The things that feel strange now become automatic eventually but only if you commit to doing them correctly rather than defaulting back to what feels comfortable.

6. The time around the lesson matters as much as the lesson itself
Grooming your horse before you ride. Learning to tack up correctly. Understanding how to read your horse's body language in the cross ties. This is not the boring part before the real lesson begins. This is horsemanship and it makes you a better rider than an hour in the saddle alone ever will.

7. Bad rides happen to every rider at every level
Including the ones you look up to most. A bad lesson does not mean you are not cut out for this, it just means you are learning something hard and doing it on the back of a living animal that is also having a day. Come back next week and it will be different.
Your instructor is on your side.

8. Every correction we give is in service of your progress and your safety
We are not pointing out what is wrong to make you feel bad but we are pointing out what needs to change so you can get where you want to go faster and more safely. The students who improve fastest are the ones who hear a correction as information rather than criticism and apply it without taking it personally.

9. Riding changes you in ways you will not expect
The patience it builds, the confidence that comes from communicating with an animal ten times your size and being understood. The resilience that develops from falling short of a goal and coming back for it anyway. The community you find at the barn. None of that shows up in the first lesson or even the tenth but it will show up at one point. For most riders it becomes one of the most significant things in their life and not just what they do on Tuesday afternoons but part of who they are.

If you are a riding instructor share this with every new family who walks through your gate. If you are a new student or a parent of one - welcome. You picked something genuinely worth doing!

What do you wish someone had told you before your very first riding lesson?

❤️❤️🫶

You don’t need big fences to build a better jumper.

Olympic show jumper (and former equitation finals competitor) Aaron Vale shares his go-to ground pole and cavaletti exercises—including the famous “circle of death”—and explains why over-fences education for horses and riders at any level doesn’t need to be complicated or involve big fences.

Dive into his practical training advice via the link in comments — available with a Chronicle subscription.

📸 Sportfot

❤️

When American buyers look for their next jumper or dressage horse, they often turn to Europe. The breeding isn’t necessarily better overseas, says trainer and rider David Reichert. The problem lies in the pipeline.

“The breeding is good in the U.S.,” Reichert explained on The Plaidcast. “The problem’s not the breeding. The problem is what are we doing with these horses when they’re four, five, six, seven years old?”

In Germany, where Reichert grew up, young horses move through a deliberate, accessible development system. In the U.S., he argues, the system doesn’t exist in a meaningful way and that gap shows.

In Germany, the structure is simple and consistent:

- Four-year-olds go to about 10 shows, competing in 70–80 cm classes.
- Five-year-olds compete in 1.00–1.10 m classes at 15–20 shows a year.
- Six-year-olds step up to 1.20–1.30 m, again in 15–20 shows.

By the time a horse is seven, it has seen 40–50 quality, confidence-building classes. Importantly, these shows are designed for development: shorter courses, fewer fences, and judging based on performance rather than time.

“You trailer to the show, you ride the class, and then you go back home,” Reichert said. “You don’t keep the horse at the show for weeks and weeks. And it’s judged on the performance of the horse. It’s not timed, it’s not 13 jumps, it’s seven, eight, nine jumps built fairly to give the horse confidence.”

This repetition, he explains, is what makes German seven- and eight-year-olds so competitive and why American buyers so often import them.

Try to replicate that model in the U.S., and the numbers are staggering. With shows costing $1,000–$1,500 a week, giving a young horse 40–50 starts can run $50,000–$70,000 before the horse even turns seven. By then, an American-bred horse would have to sell for over $120,000 just for the breeder or trainer to break even.

“That’s why we’re not competitive,” Reichert said. “The young horse has to cost double or triple just to cover the expenses. In Germany, the same horse can cost $50,000 or $60,000 because the cost to get it there is so much lower.”

Course design compounds the problem. In the U.S., many so-called “young horse” classes are just watered-down versions of standard divisions: long tracks with 12–13 jumps, two combinations, and questions designed for much older horses.

“At the big A shows, the same course gets labeled as a young horse class,” Reichert said. “And then you’re supposed to take your five-year-old in there. That’s not development. That’s not giving the horse a positive experience.”

Local shows don’t always solve the issue, either. While some offer thoughtful courses, many are plagued by inconsistent footing, poor warm-up areas, and classes that don’t reflect the careful progression young horses need.

📎 Continue reading this article at https://www.theplaidhorse.com/2025/09/10/fixing-the-young-horse-pipeline-why-the-u-s-falls-behind-europe/
📸 © Heather N. Photography

Taz is all settled in in his new home in Missouri! This was a special 5 yo homebred Trakehner/TB! He did his first USEA event in March and has already done 2 Training level ones by May! He has the best brain and we look forward to watching him grow in Julie Wolfert’s program with the LaCarrubba Family!! Congratulations!!

*** DOES HAVING A TRAINER IN THE WARM UP RING, HELP OR HINDER?! ***

Some Friday night musings/opinions!

I’ve never had anyone to warm me up in my 35 years of competing, bar a couple of times at the National Dressage Championships. I truly believe a trainer in the warm up can often be detrimental, especially at the lower levels.

Your training is achieved at home, and not in the ten or so minutes before you compete. I’ve often seen riders at the lower levels (which I’m currently competing at, before anyone gets offended!) have intense training sessions in the warm up arena, and then go in and it all fall apart. Other than offering some positive “good”s, I think riders are far better off concentrating on how they feel their horse is going, rather than being shouted at by a trainer. Obviously in a jumping warm up, you need someone doing the jumps, and ideally someone that knows your routine. But personally I don’t believe that having a training session in the warm up arena helps one bit. I’m not talking about eyes on the ground before a rider goes into a GP test, as certainly from a dressage point of view, someone just to comment that the horse needs to be a little more up/forward, can be helpful.

Maybe it helps with a rider’s nerves? As I said, I’ve never had anyone train me at a competition, so I don’t know. But I prefer to feel how my horse is going that day, and make my own adjustments. Maybe it’s also because I don’t really train with anyone very often (through lack of time and not being able to pin the good trainers down!). Fortunately, my mum isn’t horsey, so I’ve never had to put up with her shouting instructions at me in the warm up, like I see many poor kids go through!

If it works for you, then carry on having help in the warm up, but if things often fall apart in the ring, then it may be worth having some quiet time with your horse in the warm up, so you can feel what may or may not happen when you get in the ring. Just some food for thought, and an insight into my competition prep. Other than when I’m on Alfred, as that’s a whole different warm up on a severely horse shy horse! 🤠 🫣

Photo of George, jumping huge tracks as a 6 year old! Aiming to be back at that height very soon 🤞

Sad but true fact.
A big discussion lately among trainers is that we work non stop and end up subsidizing the horse owners hobby. There is no money to be made boarding horses because no one would pay the actual cost. It’s hard for horse owners to understand the pricing because they fail to figure in the time it takes to care for their animals and expect us to essentially work for free. Most clients don’t see the hidden cost of their facility. Insurance, repairs and upkeep to equipment and property, mortgage or rent, payroll, the list is truly endless. Many think that “it can’t be that expensive to feed a horse” but absolutely fail to see all the costs involved. That hose your horse just stepped on and broke needs to be replaced. The fence board that it broke isn’t free. Costs are insane. Truly.
Boarding barns and lesson programs are closing down every single day. The burn out rate is skyrocketing and I don’t see a solution. The financial and emotional toil it takes is off the charts.
Thank your trainer, barn owner, staff and understand the huge sacrifice we make. Yes, we certainly chose this life but it comes at a huge cost.

Can Work-Life Balance—And A Savings Account—Exist In The Horse Industry? - The Chronicle of the Horse In early July of this year, I decided to write a post on Facebook explaining my decision to radically change my business.

Luna ❤️ this mare is SMART & Fancy! This was Tuesday And only my 3rd ride on her. She’s 5 but just got started under saddle as she had some babies first! This was probably only her 10th ride under saddle, we haven’t had time to get her going consistently but we’re about to start! Price will increase soon! 20k now

Sassenach D’avalon 5yo Oldenberg Mare

Luna first video! 9.17.24